While we, the citizens of the U.S., remain in legal America, the U.S. national security state exists in "post-legal America" because no illegal act from warrantless surveillance to torture committed in its service will ever be prosecuted.

Lost is the lesson of 9/11: We didn't have a collection problem but a connection one. Yet our response has largely been not to find better ways of connecting the dots, but rather simply to collect more dots.

If the thought of the government accessing your business or medical records, telephone calls and even your genetic information isn't scary enough, the most frightening aspect is that we don't know how the government actually interprets and applies Section 215.